Creating Comic Strips Online

More and more options are out there for students to create comic strips online. Check out Adrian Bruce's website, The Teacher Toolbox, and the page for online tools for making comic strips. Another interesting option is xtranormal.com

Please share additional sites by commenting below!

Keyboarding Training and Fun for Home

Looking for high interest online keyboarding activities for students to work on at home? Educators in MCPS and throughout the country have contributed an online list of online keyboarding activities: Keyboarding Resources Diigo Group.

The list includes links, comments on activities and tags/labels to help you see which activities may work for your students.

Be thinking what skills are appropriate for your students as you check the sites:
- just learning the basic location of keys?
- learning the 2-handed motor patterns of combining letters to make words?
- developing speed and accuracy when copying longer text?
- becoming proficient in home-row finger placement and touch-typing?

Also,
- which activities may be too frustrating (time constraints, too much negative feedback)?
- which may be too overstimulating or visually distracting?
- which have higher interest topics?

One size does not fit all. Luckily we have lots of options and new ones come around every week! Make sure you share good ones you find that aren't on the list.

Which strategies have been most successful in getting your students to be proficient keyboarders?

Can I use Natural Reader at home?

Question:
Does Natural Reader have teacher take home rights so that teachers can use it at home?

Answer:
Natural Reader is free.  Download it from http://www.naturalreaders.com/

• Natural Reader is text reader software.  It enables the computer to read any text on the screen by simply selecting the text and clicking the read button on the floating toolbar
• More help with Natural Reader is here

Learn Skills-Feed Hungry..with flexible support

Looking for a way to help feed the hungry, develop academic skills and introduce students to free accessible technology all at once? Probably not unless you have run across FreeRice.com and thought to pair it with a free text reader as was done by teacher Keir Lewis at Col. E. Brooke Lee Middle School.

FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. FreeRice has two goals: 1) provide education to everyone for free and 2) help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.
Students answer multiple choice questions for a variety of topic areas (see below) that may have applications for elementary to high school students. For every correct answer, FreeRice.com donates 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program (“Though 10 grains of rice may seem like a small amount, it is important to remember that while you are playing, so are thousands of other people at the same time.” – www.FreeRice.com).

A text reader like NaturalReader allows words to be read aloud for those who struggle with reading, a particular benefit with some of the grammar and vocabulary sections. NaturalReader is a free text reader program that is available in MCPS schools and for download at home - allowing teachers to model this at school and have students extend the benefit to home. A number of quick guides and instructional videos on NaturalReader are available on the HIAT website.

Freerice.com topic areas (as of 1/26/10):

ART: Famous Paintings CHEMISTRY: Chemical Symbols (Basic), Chemical Symbols (Full List) ENGLISH: English Grammar, English Vocabulary GEOGRAPHY: Identify Countries on the Map, World Capitals LANGUAGE LEARNING: French, German, Italian, Spanish MATH: Basic Math (Pre-Algebra), Multiplication Table

How have you used these resources to support learning and service? Do you know of other good websites providing similar benefits?

Coverting PDF files to Word

Have a worksheet in locked PDF format that you want students to type into?
Found a great reading passage in PDF format you want to read aloud with text reader software(e.g. Kurzweil, Natural Reader)?

In most cases, you will need to covert it to a MS Word file that can be used for these purposes.

www.zamzar.com is a free tool that allows you to upload a PDF file, have it converted to a Word document, and e-mailed back to you (usually the same day)

You can find printable quick guides and videos on text reader software and flexible features of MS Word on the HIAT web-site Quick Guides page.

What other tools do you use to convert PDF files to make them more usable?

ScreenToaster.com: Quick, Easy and Free Video Tutorials from Any Computer

Ever need to demonstrate software or how to do different things on the computer? You should consider using ScreenToaster.com to create a more permanent and "on-demand" online video demonstration.
Find yourself repeating directions and demonstrations over and over to staff, students or parents for tasks using the computer? You need to stop what you are doing right now and spend 10 minutes to learn how to use ScreenToaster.com.
ScreenToaster.com allows you to record activity on your computer screen from any computer with an Internet connection, add voice narration (either as you record or after you finish) and quickly upload it to the Internet to share with staff, students or parents.
This ScreenToaster.com video tutorial will get you up and running with this incredibly flexible and free tool.

Ever use ScreenToaster or another web-based screen capture tool to teach technology skills? Post a comment and let us know!